The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of by Joseph Hansen Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t beach-tanned, it was tanned like leather. His beard might or might not ever have been trimmed. A twisted and knotted bandanna kept his long hair back. He wore a flimsy cotton shirt not made in U.S.A. and jeans not faded by the manufacturer. He didn’t speak. His brows, thick and black and straight above startling blue eyes, did the questioning.
    Dave said, “Did you buy the stock too?”
    “It’s still here.” He jerked his head. “In back.”
    “The shop at the waterfront is closed. I need a couple of tubes of paint and a brush.”
    “I don’t know anything about it,” the man said, but he went out and came back with cardboard cartons. He turned one over and paint tubes and little boxes of paint tubes rattled out on the desk. Out of the other he dumped paper-taped clumps of brushes. “Help yourself.” He stood back against the bookshelves and began to make a cigarette out of a Zig-Zag paper and Bugler tobacco. His fingers were thick and the blackness under the nails suggested he worked with machinery. When Dave chose slim tubes of black and white and a small sable brush, he said, “No colors?”
    “What do I owe you?” Dave asked.
    The man didn’t hear. He was staring into the patio where voices were raised. Dave turned. Three of the sunhatted widows crossed under the jacaranda tree, making for the handweaver’s shop. The voices weren’t theirs. They swung around to stare at a pair who had come to a halt just inside the patio. The man was frail and white haired and wore a linen suit yellow with age, and the woman was gypsy-dark, in beads, sandals, a granny dress, hair around her head in thick braids. The man leaned at her, shouting.
    “So I signed a paper. We’re supposed to be friends.”
    “Tyree, shut up, darling. There’s nothing to say. The man wants the pictures. I sold him the pictures. You gave me that right.” She walked off.
    “Not for pennies, I didn’t.” He caught her, turned her. “I came back from the dead to paint those pictures. Two thousand dollars!” He laughed but there was a sob in it. “A baseball player gets more than that for taking a deep breath.” She twisted in his hands. He wouldn’t let go. “You promised me a show. Two years I waited. I lived on that promise.”
    “You lived on vodka.” She jerked free and came for the gallery, the flat soles of the sandals slapping the tiles. He lunged after her. He looked unsteady but she refused to run and he caught her again only steps from the gallery door.
    “Since you didn’t notice,” he snarled, “I wasn’t happy sweeping the floor, swabbing the john, framing daubs for lady tourists.” He saw the widows gaping and stuck out his tongue at them. “I have talent, remember?”
    “I kept my promise.” She tugged a hand loose and waved it at the window where the watercolors hung. “There’s your show for anyone to see. Only no one cares, Tyree. Can’t you get that through your head? No one is buying.”
    “Are you saying they’re bad?” He looked as if she’d knocked the wind out of him. He let her go. His next words begged and had tears in them. “You don’t mean that, Mona.”
    She rubbed her arms where he’d gripped them. She tried to be calm and kind. “I mean they’re too good for this location. That’s why I set up this lunch with Castouros. He can sell them. They’ll hang in nice homes—Santa Barbara, Malibu, Beverly Hills. They’ll be looked at and admired. Tyree, I was doing you a favor. What do you want from me? It’s been a long, long time since you had two thousand dollars in a lump.”
    “He’ll get ten thousand, twenty. That greasy Greek queen. An interior decorator, for God’s sake! Why? What talent has he got? Why should a nothing like that—”
    The bearded man had walked to the gallery door. Now he left it and stood in front of the fragile old man. “Go sober up,” he said.
    Smith shrank a little but he didn’t go. “Franklin. This is your doing. You and your Mexican